Category Archives: Sexual Harassment

As the #MeToo movement was changing the conversation around sexual harassment nationwide, both New York State and New York City passed laws aimed at changing the way New York employers handle sexual harassment in the workplace. The changes include mandatory sexual harassment training and policies, enhanced protections for employees and non-employees and additional reporting and certification requirements for City and State contractors. Some of the new requirements are already in effect, while others must be implemented by employers over the next year. With laws changing at both the state and local level over the course of the next year, what do New York employers need to know? We have provided a detailed review of the new laws below.

New York State

The On April 12, 2018, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law budget legislation that included significant anti-sex harassment measures. Most notably, this legislation: (1) requires mandatory sexual harassment training and written anti-harassment policies; (2) expands sexual harassment protections to non-employees; (3) prohibits certain non-disclosure provisions in settlement agreements; (4) prohibits mandatory arbitration of sexual harassment claims; and (5) requires bidders on state contracts to certify compliance with policy and training requirements.

Annual Sexual Harassment Training and Written Anti-Harassment Policy.

Beginning October 9, 2018, New York State employers will be required to distribute a written anti-harassment policy and provide annual anti-sexual harassment training to all New York employees. All employees must receive training by January 1, 2019. New York State has developed a model training program (available here) and a model sexual harassment policy (available here) for employers to use. These models are currently subject to revision following a public comment period, which is scheduled to end September 12, 2018.

An employer may develop its own policy and training program as long as they meet all of the requirements of the new law. Trainings must be interactive and include: (i) an explanation of sexual harassment consistent with Department of Labor guidance; (ii) examples of prohibited conduct; (iii) information concerning federal and state law related to sexual harassment and the remedies available under these laws; (iv) notice to employees of their rights of redress and all available administrative and judicial forums for adjudicating sexual harassment claims; and (v) information addressing conduct by supervisors and any additional supervisor responsibilities.

Anti-harassment policies must include a complaint form for use by employees. A model complaint form has been published for employer use, and is available here.

Expansion of Sexual Harassment Protections to Non-Employees.

The New York State Human Rights Law has been expanded to cover non-employees. Employers may now be held liable for sexual harassment of non-employees such as contractors, vendors, and consultants, if the employer knew or should have known that the individual was subjected to sexual harassment at the employer’s workplace and failed to take appropriate corrective action.

Non-Disclosure Provisions in Settlement Agreements Prohibited.

Beginning July 11, 2018, contract terms that prevented the disclosure of the underlying facts and circumstances related to a sexual harassment claim became unlawful—unless the non-disclosure provision was the complaining party’s preference. The complainant must be given 21 days to consider whether to accept the proposed confidentiality language, and then seven days to revoke his or her acceptance of it. Any agreed-upon non-disclosure provisions only become effective after the seven-day revocation period has expired. Furthermore, any such agreed upon non-disclosure provisions must apply to all parties to the agreement. The new law does not prohibit provisions that prevent disclosure of the terms of the agreement.

Also beginning July 11, 2018, mandatory arbitration clauses that purported to apply to sexual harassment claims became prohibited (and rendered null and void), except where inconsistent with federal law. The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempts any state rule that discriminates on its face against arbitration. Thus, this provision may be not be enforceable with respect to arbitration agreements governed by the FAA.

New Requirements for State Contract Bidders.

Beginning January 1, 2019, every bidder on a New York State contract must certify that it complies with the above requirements concerning written harassment policies and annual anti-harassment training. A bid that fails to include the required language will not be considered.

New York City

In May 2018, New York City passed the Stop Sexual Harassment in NYC Act (“the Act”). The Act requires: (1) annual sexual harassment training of employees; (2) a poster in the workplace advising employees of their rights and a similar written notice to every new employee; and (3) enhanced reporting by bidders on New York City contracts. The Act also expands the protections of the New York City Human Rights Law to all employers, regardless of size.

Annual Sexual Harassment Training for Employers with 15+ Employees.

As of April 1, 2019, New York City employers with 15 or more employees (including interns) will be required to conduct annual anti-sexual harassment training for all employees, including supervisory and managerial employees. The Act requires that training be interactive (though it need not be live or conducted in-person) and must:

provide an explanation of sexual harassment as a form of unlawful discrimination under NYC law;

state that sexual harassment is a form of unlawful discrimination under federal and New York state law;

include a description of what sexual harassment is;

describe the employer’s internal complaint process;

state the complaint process available through the NYC Commission on Human Rights, the New York State Division of Human Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including contact information;

explain the prohibition against retaliation;

include information concerning bystander intervention (i.e., such as suggestions on how to confront a harasser); and

provide the specific responsibilities of supervisory and managerial employees in the prevention of sexual harassment and retaliation, and measures such employees should take to appropriately address sexual harassment complaints.

The training must be conducted on an annual basis for incumbent employees, and new employees who work 80 or more hours per year on a full or part-time basis in New York City must receive the training after 90 days of initial hire. If an employee has received training at one employer within the training cycle, he or she would not be required to receive additional training at a different employer until the next annual cycle. The Act also clarifies that if an employer is subject to training requirements in multiple jurisdictions, it will comply with the Act so long as any annual training that is provided to employees addresses, at a minimum, the substantive requirements of the Act. Thus, for practical purposes, NYC employers with 15 or more employees, who are required to provide training under New York State law by no later than January 1, 2019, should make sure such training satisfies the New York City requirements as well. The City will also require employers to generate and retain records of all trainings, including signed acknowledgements.

The New York City Commission on Human Rights will develop publicly available online sexual harassment training modules for employers’ use, which will satisfy the requirements of the Act so long as the employer supplements the module with information about the employer’s own internal complaint process to address sexual harassment claims.

Mandatory Sexual Harassment Poster and Fact Sheet Distribution.

Effective September 6, 2018, all New York City employers are required to conspicuously display an anti-sexual harassment rights and responsibilities poster and to distribute an information sheet on sexual harassment to new hires, both of which were issued by the City August 2018. A copy of the poster can be found here (and available here in Spanish), and the corresponding fact sheet for distribution can be found here.

The required poster must be “conspicuously display[ed] . . . in employee breakrooms or other common areas employees gather.” The Act requires that all employers display the poster in both English and Spanish. The notice must be at least 8.5 x 14 inches with a minimum 12 point font. Employers may distribute the information sheet to new employees as a standalone document or incorporate the factsheet into their employee handbook.

Expansion of Applicability to All Employers.

The New York City Human Rights Law was amended to permit claims of gender-based harassment by all employees, regardless of the size of the employer. Previously, the NYCHRL’s anti-discrimination provisions were only applicable to employers with four or more employees. The statute of limitations for filing complaints with the NYC Commission on Human Rights for gender-based harassment claims was also extended from one year to three years following occurrence of the alleged harassment.

New Requirements for City Contract Bidders.

As of July 8, 2018, city contractors are now required to include their practices, policies, and procedures “relating to preventing and addressing sexual harassment” as part of an existing report required for certain contracts under the City Charter and corresponding rules.

In the weeks since allegations began to surface regarding the sexually predatory behavior of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, sexual harassment allegations (sometimes admitted and sometimes disputed) against powerful, prominent men have been a daily feature of the headlines, involving Oscar-winning actors, sitting and would-be senators, talk show hosts, and numerous other high profile figures. Allegations against the both the current President of the United States and one of his predecessors, while not new, have been the subject of renewed focus.

On social media, the “#MeToo” campaign has featured numerous women coming forward with their experiences as victims of sexual harassment. While the effect of these developments is still evolving, clearly there have been changes in how sexual harassment is perceived and understood, particularly when the alleged perpetrator is not only powerful, but famous. That being said, for an employer assessing potential liability, has the legal landscape for sexual harassment and related claims really changed all that much?

The impacts of this explosion of high profile episodes is potentially far reaching, even for employers far outside the political, entertainment, and media arenas where so many of the recent cases have emerged. Public awareness of sexual harassment issues in general is certainly more pronounced. In many (but not all) situations, the public has treated the allegations as credible, even when raised years or decades after the fact. Not surprisingly, there have also been downsides to the recent uproar, including regrettable attempts to blame or attack victims who have come forward. In one bizarre episode in connection with an ongoing political campaign, a woman apparently attempted to plant false allegations of harassment in the Washington Post, precisely so that they could be shown as false, thus undermining the credibility of the Post and, by implication, of other women whose accusations had earlier been reported there.

But for employers, whether they are high profile media outlets or corner drug stores, sexual harassment involves legal duties and the risk of liability if those duties are not met. Those duties haven’t really changed. The law governing sexual harassment has been developed in state and federal courts for several decades. While the law continues to evolve in certain areas, the basic legal framework and key procedural requirements are well-established. When an employer is actually sued for sexual harassment, those rules, including mundane boring procedural requirements, can be the key to winning or losing the case. Two recent decisions illustrate the fact that the old rules still apply:

In Tudor v. SE. Okla. State Univ., in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, the plaintiff’s allegations implicated some cutting edge issues, but the case was decided using fundamental precepts of employment discrimination law. The plaintiff, a college professor, contended that Southeastern Oklahoma State denied her tenure application and then fired her because of her transgender status (she was transitioning from male to female). She also claimed that the University maintained a hostile environment, and that she was retaliated against for raising concerns in the first place.

The University moved for summary judgment, but the court denied the motion. First, regarding a hostile environment claim, the issue was whether the plaintiff alleged a sufficient number of incidents, with sufficient severity, to establish “a work environment permeated with intimidation and ridicule.” In other words, was the environment bad enough to support a legal claim? The plaintiff relied not only on sporadic insults and comments, but also on the fact that every day over the course of a four-year period she had restrictions on which restroom she could use, how she could dress, and what make-up she could wear. She also noted that administrators persisted in using a male pronoun to refer to her even after she considered herself to be female. The court found that that was sufficiently pervasive to survive summary judgment and preserve her hostile environment claims for trial. The court also rejected a defense based on plaintiff’s alleged failure to take advantage of preventive and corrective opportunities at the University. The plaintiff successfully countered this argument by noting that at the time, the University did not have policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of transgender status. Therefore, there was no effective internal redress available to her.

The court also denied summary judgment on the plaintiff’s claim that the tenure denial and subsequent termination were discriminatory. The court had decided in a previous ruling that transgender status is protected under Title VII. In evaluating the evidence of discrimination, the court applied the familiar three-part framework: (1) plaintiff must demonstrate a prima facie case; (2) the employer must provide evidence of a legitimate non-discriminatory reason for the employment action; and (3) plaintiff must provide evidence that the asserted legitimate reason is actually a pretext for discrimination. The primary dispute concerned evidence of pretext, which the plaintiff satisfied by showing substantial procedural irregularities in the tenure decision, including a refusal to state reasons for the denial of tenure and use of a backdated letter to elaborate on rationales for the tenure denial.

Finally, with respect to the retaliation claim, the court found sufficient facts to show protected conduct followed by an adverse employment action. The application of Title VII and other gender discrimination laws to transgender status is a new and disputed legal issue, but the framework used to analyze such claims is well-established, and the court applied it to determine that the case would go forward.

In another recent case, Durand v. District of Columbia Government, decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the employer prevailed, also by relying on the validity of long-established legal requirements for such claims. The plaintiff contended that he was being retaliated against for prior participation in a large sexual harassment lawsuit that had been decided some years earlier. In dismissing the retaliation and retaliatory harassment claims, the Court of Appeals relied on plaintiff’s procedural failures, including failure to file a proper administrative charge of discrimination with the EEOC and failure to proceed in a timely fashion. The case also failed in part because it was based on employer actions that were not materially adverse to plaintiff’s employment status. Finally, plaintiff failed to show severe or pervasive harassment, which would be necessary to support a retaliatory harassment claim.

Both of these recent decisions confirm that while public perception and understanding of sexual harassment may be experiencing a true revolution, in litigation both the employer and the employee must comply with largely well-established legal doctrines to determine who actually wins the case.

Question: One of our male supervisors wants to fire a female employee who complained that he was sexually harassing her. The harassment allegations appear to have some substance: he asked her for pictures of herself in a bikini; told her to “stay off [her] knees,” which she viewed as sexual innuendo; and told her that her regulation length shorts were too short. Also, the grounds for termination (driving a vehicle with the door open, creating a safety hazard) have been overlooked in other situations. We are a little worried that she will claim we are retaliating against her for the sexual harassment complaint. But the supervisor says he never heard about the sexual harassment complaint. So, if he didn’t know about the complaint, he could not possibly retaliate against her on the basis of that complaint, right? You could get this case thrown out before it ever went to trial, right?

Our company has a sexual harassment policy. The policy makes clear that an employee who feels as though he or she has been harassed should report the problematic conduct to our Director of Human Resources. The policy also provides that, if more convenient, or for any other reason, the employee also can report the harassing behaviors to anyone else in management. Essentially, we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for an employee to report harassment so our company can address the employee’s concerns effectively.

One of our employees recently filed a Charge of Discrimination with the EEOC. She claims that she was sexually harassed by the Director of Business Development, one of our company’s managers, and describes some pretty serious conduct. In her Charge, she contends that she directly confronted this individual and advised him that his behaviors were unwelcome. She also stated in her EEOC Charge that her direct communications with this individual constituted her “report” of sexual harassment to company management.

Surprise, surprise, our Director of Business Development never said anything to anyone else about this harassment “complaint”. Is this legit? Can the sole report of the harassment by the alleged victim of the harassment be made to the harasser? Answer→

One of our employees complained of sexual harassment. We investigated, though admittedly not as promptly as we should have. We discovered that the harasser had engaged in some seriously problematic conduct. Our investigation also revealed that the harasser had engaged in similar conduct at a prior employer and previously, at our company, with a different employee who had elected not to report.

The victim of the harassment is now threatening to sue us and demanding settlement compensation. Her lawyer suggests that if we do not settle, he will sue us for multiple claims, including both sexual harassment and negligent hiring. (Apparently, his investigation also revealed the past problems.) Is this legit? Can we be sued for multiple claims based on the same conduct?

Our company provides private correctional and detention management to government agencies around the globe. One of our employees, a detentions officer, reported to our Ethics Officer that a co-worker called her work phone and asked her to engage in sexual intercourse and to be his “booty call” or “one night stand.” She refused to file a formal written complaint. Our Ethics Officer spoke with the co-worker, who denied the allegations and stated instead that the complaining employee had sexually harassed him. Given the “he said, she said” nature of the complaints, the Ethics Officer told both employees to keep it professional at work.

A few weeks later, the employee again reported the same harassment to a supervisor. The supervisor said he would speak with the Ethics Officer, but nothing more was done regarding the employee’s complaint. It is undisputed, however, that the co-worker did not bother the employee again following the admonition from the Ethics Officer to both of them to keep it professional.

A few days after this second report of the same incidence, the complaining employee herself was suspended from employment as the subject of a federal investigation involving reports of misconduct including that she had engaged in sex with detainees and brought contraband into the facility. The supervisor to whom the employee had complained the second time conducted the investigation. The investigation concluded with a sustained finding that the complaining employee was observed by Officers and detainees blowing kisses, flirting and rubbing up against detainees. The employee was terminated.

The employee has sued us, claiming that we engaged in unlawful employment practices by failing to take appropriate prompt and remedial action in response to her complaint of harassment and that we retaliated against her for making the complaint by terminating her employment. Should we be concerned about losing this lawsuit? Answer→

One of our male employees (call him Mr. X) recently complained that a supervisor at our company was sexually harassing Mr. X’s girlfriend, also one of our employees. We advised him that we would investigate. Apparently, however, our investigation was not moving sufficiently fast for him. When Mr. X encountered the supervisor in routine work settings, he was confrontational and unpleasant. We advised him he needed to tone it down and let our HR Department do its work, but that just seemed to anger him more. The supervisor who had been accused of harassment informed us that he was getting very nervous about Mr. X’s antagonistic conduct. Based on this escalating situation, we terminated Mr. X’s employment.He now has filed a charge for “associated discrimination” and retaliation. Say what? Can a significant other of our employees claim discrimination because of the way our company allegedly treats their girlfriend? Answer→